Santoro fires back at Sinodinos over Obeid claims

Federal Liberal Party vice-president Santo Santoro has challenged claims by Liberal senator Arthur Sinodinos that the family of Labor powerbroker Eddie Obeid had no control of infrastructure company Australian Water Holdings when Mr Sinodinos was its chairman.
Photo: Glen McCurtayne

NOTE: A complaint to the Australian Press Council about this article was upheld. Read the full adjudication here.

Federal Liberal Party vice-president
Santo Santoro
has challenged claims by Liberal senator
Arthur Sinodinos
that the family of Labor powerbroker
Eddie Obeid
had no control of infrastructure company Australian Water Holdings when Mr Sinodinos was its chairman.

Mr Santoro, who served for several months last year as a director of AWH subsidiary Australian Water Queensland, claimed Eddie Obeid’s son, Edward Obeid Jr, acted as a director of AWH.

Mr Santoro told the Weekend Financial Review that when he was with the group “I was aware that Mr Eddie Obeid Jr was a director of Australian Water".

AFR
AFR

While a spokesman for the company denied that Mr Obeid had ever been on the AWH board, Mr Santoro stood by his claim that Mr Obeid was exercising control as a director over the company.

“I can again confirm that Eddie Obeid Jr was a director of Australian Water, but [I] was unaware of the financial arrangements and links – if any – between Australian Water and the Obeid family," he wrote in an email.

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Mr Obeid is the subject of a inquiry by the NSW Independent Commission Against Corruption over coalmining leases in the state.

Senator Sinodinos said Eddie Obeid Jr worked in Queensland but “I had no reason to regard his presence in the company as signifying some greater involvement by the Obeid family in AWH, and I had very limited dealings with him."

Senator Sinodinos was chief of staff for former prime minister
John Howard
when he elevated Mr Santoro, then a Queensland senator, to cabinet in January 2006.

Mr Howard accepted Mr Santoro’s resignation from federal cabinet in March 2007 after it was revealed he had failed to disclose more than 70 share trades.

Abbott intervenes

Mr Santoro, who runs a Brisbane-based lobbying business, is one of the federal Liberals’ chief fund-raisers. Last June Opposition Leader
Tony Abbott
intervened to defeat a motion to ban lobbyists from holding such positions in the party.

A week later, Mr Santoro was appointed a director of AWQ, AWH’s Queensland arm. He resigned in September.

“I resigned because I was informed that the Australian Water Queensland board was being restructured and because of this, my services were no longer required," he told the Weekend Financial Review.

Senator Sinodinos also conceded in his address on Thursday he failed to declare seven company directorships on his Senate register of interests.

Labor said it defies belief the senator forgot to declare the companies. Prime Minister
Julia Gillard
described the omissions as “a murky matter’’ while Finance Minister
Penny Wong
said the senator’s explanation did not “pass the person-on-the-street test’’.

Mr
Abbott
denied that Senator Sinodinos had been tarnished by being associated with Mr Obeid and said the undeclared directorships were not-for-profit concerns.